xylophone

There, there Skippy, calm down boy – – and if you are really talking about small minds, then direct your comments at trump, because not only does he have a small mind (plus something else which Stormy mentioned) that which he does have is incapable of functioning properly! Is Greenland for sale???

Yee-- ha, break out the moonshine Marylou!! Don't really see what your post has got to do with the topic, however I'm sure that you are pleased to have got that rant out of your system, however please don't enlighten others as to exactly what you were trying to say/achieve, because I don't think anyone would be interested in any more of your ramblings!

Nato allies agreed in 2014, after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, to halt the spending cuts they had made after the Cold War and move towards spending 2 per cent of their GDP on defence by 2024. The spending target is not a requirement for Nato members. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/donald-trump-sowing-doubts-about-us-commitment-to-nato-is-shocking-says-joe-biden

You should have posted a caveat then, that he is not a fully qualified medical doctor and that he has been censored for spreading Covid misinformation. And that's all I'm going to say on the subject because as you say, it is off topic. Beware of charlatans.

I have posted a few times on AN that IMO Hamas is well and truly infiltrated into the Palestinian population, much more so than the Palestinian authorities would have you know, and also elsewhere it seems. For me, I cannot condemn the IDF/Israel for what they are trying to do and as I've also said before, Hamas started a war and now they should be responsible for the consequences. It has always been that way in war and will probably be so for our lifetimes.

Certainly was when I last went there with friends to have a look around.

The same "doctor" as this one............. John Lorimer Campbell is an English YouTuber and retired nurse educator known for his videos about the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the videos received praise, but they later veered into misinformation. All the same, I wish you well with your health situation.

Digging up "news" which is over 6 months old and which proved to be a fizzer as no action was taken.........you trumpies must be desperate for news!! How about news on trump being ordered to pay back millions which he stole from a charity, or many of his other crimes because he was convicted of them.

I knew a guy here who had a rather large bar in the prime position, and it was well frequented. It was only after he had started snorting the "Bolivian marching powder" and business started to drop off that he needed some money to keep it afloat, so he offered 25% of the bar/business to anyone who would invest in it. They weren't going to get their money back but they could sit there and enjoy free drinks for a couple of years (or was it a year?) and a couple of guys did it, but then the gullible folks dried up and he couldn't re-lease the bar because he had no funds, so he lost it. He and his wife never got on even when they were running the bar and on many occasions one or both of them would come to work with cuts and bruises and black eyes where they had been fighting the night before. But because the bar was in his wife's name, he had to stay with her. Now he is confined to a wheelchair, cannot work and seems to be living off his English pension – – so whilst for a few years he could have been "living the dream" but it all turned sour a few years back.

It was barely okay, but the sight of Jason Statham being able to kill/disable/wound a dozen or more of the country's finest police and soldiers, really puts it in the Batman and Robin box.

And this from medical specialsts should quieten the Biden bashers and dumb trump supporters......... A lengthy report by the Department of Justice on President Biden’s handling of classified documents contained some astonishing assessments of his well-being and mental health. Mr. Biden, 81, was an “elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties” who “did not remember when he was vice president,” the special counsel Robert K. Hur said. In conversations recorded in 2017, Mr. Biden was “often painfully slow” and “struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” So impaired was Mr. Biden that a jury was unlikely to convict him, Mr. Hur said. Republicans were quick to pounce, some calling the president unfit for office and demanding his removal. But while the report disparaged Mr. Biden’s mental health, medical experts on Friday noted that its judgments were not based on science and that its methods bore no resemblance to those that doctors use to assess possible cognitive impairment. In its simplest form, the issue is one that doctors and family members have been dealing with for decades: How do you know when an episode of confusion or a memory lapse is part of a serious decline? The answer: “You don’t,” said David Loewenstein, director of the center for cognitive neuroscience and aging at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The diagnosis requires a battery of sophisticated and objective tests that probe several areas: different types of memory, language, executive function, problem solving, and spatial skills and attention. The tests, he said, determine if there is a medical condition, and if so, its nature and extent. Verbal stumbles are not proof, Dr. Loewenstein and other experts said. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/health/biden-memory-doj.html

But he did say.............. "He said at a rally on Saturday that, as president, he had warned Nato allies he would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that didn’t pay their way in the alliance". The man is an idiot and is jeopardising an Alliance which has been formed to protect countries from the likes of Russia.

In fact, Nato partners do not pay the United States, as Trump implied. Nato members contribute to a common budget for civilian and military costs according to a formula based on national income and historically have met those obligations.

Veering off course just a little, but still related to the NATO subject, Russia/Putin threaten the West with their rhetoric, blaming NATO for "pushing their boundaries towards Russia", or words to that effect. However article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty sets out how countries can join the Alliance; it states that membership is open to any "European state in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to security of the North Atlantic area" Indeed Sweden and Finland applied to join in May 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine as the two countries feared for their security. In short, it is the threat of Russia and Putin which has driven countries to seek membership of NATO, not NATO's decision to expand per se, but that concept is too difficult for a simpleton like trump to understand.

Once more, just for you and trump's other "poorly educated" followers................. "The scorn for Nato that Trump expresses is based on a false premise that he has repeated for years even after being corrected, a sign that he is either incapable of processing information that conflicts with an idée fixe in his head or willing to distort facts to suit his preferred narrative. As he has many times, Trump castigated Nato partners that he called “delinquent” in paying for US protection. “You’ve got to pay,” he said. “You got to pay your bills.” In fact, Nato partners do not pay the United States, as Trump implied. Nato members contribute to a common budget for civilian and military costs according to a formula based on national income and historically have met those obligations".

The orange blob is delusional, or should I say, is dumb, and to find out why, read the following: – The scorn for Nato that Trump expresses is based on a false premise that he has repeated for years even after being corrected, a sign that he is either incapable of processing information that conflicts with an idée fixe in his head or willing to distort facts to suit his preferred narrative. As he has many times, Trump castigated Nato partners that he called “delinquent” in paying for US protection. “You’ve got to pay,” he said. “You got to pay your bills.” In fact, Nato partners do not pay the United States, as Trump implied. Nato members contribute to a common budget for civilian and military costs according to a formula based on national income and historically have met those obligations. It's a wonder he hasn't asked them if he can buy Greenland! A dumbo par excellence.

A well-to-do English man discovers that a long lost uncle has left him a farm in Australia, so he decides to go over and check it out. Unfortunately it is in the outback and has no neighbours or anything, and one day he is standing on the wooden veranda looking out into the distance when he sees a cloud of dust, which slowly gets closer, until a truck/Ute comes to a halt in front of the place, and out steps a typical outback farmer. G'day says the farmer, you must be my new neighbour, so I thought I'd pop over and say hello because we don't get many new folks out here. Oh, says the Englishman that's very nice of you, and where do you live? About 50 km east of here says the Aussie, in fact it's so rare that we get new people way out here, why don't you come over for a barbecue tomorrow afternoon. I'll get a few beers in, throw a few steaks on the barbie, put on some music and we'll have a bit of singing, a bit of dancing and a bit of rooting!!!! Oh, that all sounds rather splendid, what should I wear? Doesn't really matter said the Aussie, there'll only be the two of us.

Wrong...........because the charge of wilfully retaining and sharing classified documents would be unable to be proven given that he owned up to having them and notified the proper authorities and did not lie about any aspect of it, so the worst possible scenario would have been a slap on the wrist for being forgetful. Unlike your fat hero who lied and constantly obstructed efforts to retrieve the stolen documents....see the difference?

IMO the Hur report is a hatchet job and is just what the Republicans needed at this particular moment in time. The real reason that the Biden affair wasn't taken any further was not because of any frailty he may or may not have, but it's because it's quite obvious to those who have read the charges that the documents were not knowingly taken by Biden, nor was there any intent to deceive, because he owned up to the fact that he had them, so there is not much to charge him with. Whereas the orange clown lied through his teeth time and time again with regards to his knowledge and whereabouts of the classified documents, even claiming that he "declassified them" with his mind – – a totally different scenario, and Hur knew it.

If one has a British passport, is it still possible to live full-time in Spain, or is there some restrictions regarding Schengen visas??

Well I suppose there are a few things in Biden's favour, inasmuch as he hasn't asked one of his team if they can buy Greenland, as did Trump, nor stolen from a charity or bankrupted several companies thereby stiffing the working man. He is an elderly man and can be prone to gaffes/memory lapses, but then again compared to the ex-president, he is intelligent, squeaky clean and a diamond.

No but Fanny is his Aunt!!

I like your reply because in some ways it mirrors my retirement here, as a single guy, but with an unofficially adopted Thai daughter who does her own thing anyway, I have plenty of time on my hands but I'm never "bored". I am a completely different person now in my retirement that I was in my younger days and professional working life, where I always wanted to be successful and pushed myself to the limits. In my youth it was football which was my passion, then travelling and adventure to various inhospitable places, then switching to the corporate world and studying and training in various disciplines before retiring at the age of 58. Now I rent an apartment, have a motorbike and a car which I like driving around the place, although not in the centre of Patong, visiting shopping malls, planning meals and cooking them of course. I also like hunting around for new wine experiences and wine bargains, and like you, I'm quite happy doing absolutely nothing apart from spending far too much time on my computer and not just on AN!! I never drink during the daytime and I will never be one of those poor unfortunates sitting on a bar stool day in and day out, although I will go out in the evening about once a week to meet up with a friend or two and may well have a drink at a favourite bar. I never thought I could be this happy doing nothing as I was just the opposite when I was younger, and this life seems to suit me now I have reached the age of 76.

Have just watched, "Mr Bates vs The Post Office" and thought it was bloody brilliant, a bit of a tear jerker at times and with great British acting. Made my evening, so, many thanks to whoever recommended it!